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Acclaimed New Irish Documentary, A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot, Released This Friday, 14 September

Acclaimed New Irish Documentary, A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot, Released This Friday, 14 September

Posted: 11th September 2018

Following sold-out screenings at London, Dublin, Glasgow and Belfast International Film Festivals, CPH:DOX, Copenhagen, the Galway Film Fleadh, New Zealand and Sydney Film Festivals, Sinéad O'Shea's new Irish documentary, A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot, is set for nationwide Irish and Northern Irish release on 14 September.

What would cause a Derry mother to bring her son to be shot? O'Shea's critically acclaimed documentary asks this extraordinary question. One night in 2012, Majella O'Donnell took her teenage son Philly to a laneway near to her home to be shot in the legs by local gunmen.

In a shocking, intimate, yet often warm and surprisingly humorous portrait of a family, A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot tells their story.

Majella, her son and the gunmen are all part of the dissident community in Derry, Northern Ireland. The Troubles in Northern Ireland was supposed to have ended in 1998 with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, but this community do not accept the government or police. To them, the war is not over, even as family life continues.

In the absence of a normal relationship with the police, dissident Republicans step in to combat a perceived drug epidemic with their own brutal form of justice. Majella was faced with an agonising choice: cooperate with a punishment shooting or risk even worse consequences for her son.

Filmed over five years by renowned journalist and new mother Sinéad O’Shea (Al Jazeera English, Channel 4, The Irish Times, The New York Times, The Guardian), A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot has been described by Screen International as “fascinating and gutsy” and RTÉ as “shocking but unexpectedly humorous.” O’Shea’s achievement is to create profound empathy, making you question how you would have acted, even as you watch the astonishing drama unfold.

The film was nominated for the Fact Award at CPH:DOX, the Maysles Observational Documentary Award, Belfast, and Best International Documentary at EBS, Korea. Sinéad represented the UK and Ireland as one of Europe’s top 10 female filmmakers at Sydney Film Festival.

A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot is produced by Sinéad O’Shea, Ailish Bracken and Katie Holly of Blinder Films with Figs Jackman and André Singer of Spring Films and Oscar-nominated executive producer Joshua Oppenheimer. The production and release received the support of Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, RTÉ and Inevitable Pictures.

A Mother Brings Her Song to be Shot is released nationwide on 14 September.